OCR Text |
Show A MODERN PORTIA I I -k -'if i To Miss Lucille Pugh, the criminal lawyer of New York, belongs the dis-' tlnction of being the first of her sex to defend a man accused of murder. This honor Miss Pugh accepts with the same, unassuming frankness that characterized her conduct in the defense de-fense of Leroy Poindexter, the negro, whom she saved from the electric chair. Thanks to the skill with which Miss Pugh handled the case the first jury disagreed, and at the second trial she obtained a verdict of manslaughter in the second degree. When trying her now famous case. Miss Pugh made a remarkable picture. Standing but an inch over five feet, her auburn hair parted at the side and drawn tightly around her shapely head, her brown eyes glancing from the tense face of the accused negro to the jury of twelve white men, her right hand outstretched in an appealing appeal-ing manner toward them, her left in dicating the prisoner, she subtly sought to force into the minds of her hearers hear-ers the innocence of the man she was defending. One of the best-known court officials, who has attended for the last twenty years all the notable criminal trials in New York, stated that in his opinion, her defense was the most capable he had ever heard. |